News in English about Cuba focusing on Human Rights but including general news relevant to the issues.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Cuban town hooked on pirate social network

Cuban town hooked on pirate social network
Alexandre GROSBOIS
AFP May 9, 2017

Gaspar (Cuba) (AFP) - On a traffic island in a country town, young
Cubans are doing what most of their compatriots cannot: surfing an
online social network.

In one of the least wired countries on Earth, Gaspar, population 7,500,
is one of the most connected towns of all.

Illegally, but with the grudging tolerance of the authorities, four
local techies have launched "Gaspar Social" -- rural Cuba's answer to
Facebook.

"I think it's wonderful what these lads here in Gaspar have done. It was
a healthy change for a town that had rather lost its spark," says
Arletty Guerra, 22, one of the locals thumbing her smartphone.

More than that, Gaspar Social's promoters hope it will lead the rest of
the communist island to greater connectivity.

- Social networking -

Most Cubans must pay a $1.50 an hour to connect via state telecom firm
Etecsa's wifi points. Users of Gaspar Social do not.

Though they cannot access the world wide web via Gaspar Social, they can
share photos and videos with other users in the town.

It opened to the general public in October -- two months before Etecsa
installed the town's first official wifi hotspot.

"In the beginning it was a network just for playing video games," says
one of its creators, municipal computer technician Osmani Montero, 23.

"Then we opened it to all the people in Gaspar and the number of users
grew hugely in just a month."

- Extra capacity -

Yoandi Alvarez, 30, a medical student, raised money to buy the first
aerial and server for the network.

"The antenna was near my house," he recalls. "There were users at two or
three o'clock in the morning sitting in the doorway to get online,
covered in quilts and blankets."

Some 500 of the town's 7,500 inhabitants have started using Gaspar Social.

The team had to buy four extra relay antennas to handle the large number
of users.

To the chat and file-sharing functions it has added a news page -- with
state-authorized stories only.

- Not-so-wide web -

Cuba's government has been gradually opening up the economy over the
past decade. It has said it aims to provide internet access to all
Cubans by 2020.

But the online revolution has been slow in coming.

In a country of 11 million people, there are just 317 public wifi hotspots.

Only selected groups such as scientists, journalists and doctors are
allowed to have internet access in their homes.

Small-scale local projects like Gaspar's "offer an alternative given
Cuba's infrastructure problems," which prevent many homes from getting
online, says Yudivian Almeida, a computing specialist at Havana University.

If just one home has an internet cable, using wireless technology "a
whole network can be generated" for neighboring homes to get online, he
says.

- Got a permit? -

Gaspar Social is one of about 30 local networks launched by young
amateurs in Cuba in recent years.

They are unlicensed but the communist authorities tolerate them as long
as they do not venture into politics or pornography.

Gaspar Social's founders were called in last month after the network's
success came to the attention of the ruling Communist Party.

They thought they were going to get shut down -- but the officials gave
them instructions on applying for a permit, raising hopes that the state
may authorize projects like theirs.

"They made it clear our network was illegal," Alvarez says. "But they
said they wouldn't be taking our antennas down."